Hot News: Canucks miss playoffs for first time in six years after ugly loss to the Ducks

It's official: it's over.

And it ended ugly, embarrassing, pockmarked with mistakes, sullied by a lax effort.

The Vancouver Canucks, with John Tortorella behind the bench and a roster of underperformers on the ice, will miss the National Hockey League playoffs for the first time in six years.

Elimination came at 9:30 p.m. PT on Monday, when the buzzer sounded to conclude a contest between the Canucks and the visiting Anaheim Ducks. The home team went down 3-0, shut out by a 20-year-old goalie, John Gibson, playing his first NHL game.



Ottawa Senators goalie Craig Anderson is named the fisrt star in game against the Chicago Blackhawks at the Canadian Tire Centre on March 28. USA TODAY Sports Multimedia

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Hockey fans in Vancouver celebrated in the rain Sunday, before watching the Ottawa Senators defeat the Vancouver Canucks in the Heritage Classic. Fans say B.C. Place Stadium is a good alternative venue. CP Video NHL

As the game clock ticked towards zero, a chant emerged from the upper bowl of Rogers Arena: 'Fire Gillis.' The refrain to remove general manager Mike Gillis from his office was repeated a half-dozen times. There were no similar expressions about the coach. Take it for what you will.

The recriminations over what went wrong will reverberate around this hockey team for a long while. Fans bray for action. Pundits in the press seem certain the coach is done for after a single season. A smaller faction of observers - sensing the conservative business style of the team owners, the Aquilinis - would not be shocked to see both Gillis and Tortorella back for next season.

Given how things unravelled in the past three months, something needs to be reconfigured.

'It's not fun,' said team captain Henrik Sedin, whose own mistake early in the first period led to the night's opening goal. 'This is not where we want to be.' Then, addressing the question of the fire-Gillis chorus, the leader of the team on the ice said: 'A lot of things have gone wrong.'

Then there was Ryan Kesler, who turns 30 in August, with two years left on his contract. He wanted out at the trade deadline because he can see the obvious, that the prospects for winning here, for contending, are slim. He is a player who wears his emotions on his face. Speaking to reporters, his eyes down cast, his mood sullen, he was asked if it had been absorbed, missing the postseason.

'It's already sunk in,' he said. 'It's not a good feeling.'

The loss to Anaheim makes official what had been a high probability since the same Ducks punched up the Canucks 5-1 in this same arena two weekends ago.

The latest defeat to the Ducks, while its marks the end of hope in the 2013-14 campaign, also highlights the challenge that will greet the Canucks, in whatever reconstituted form, for 2014-15. In the Canucks greatest years, 2009 through 2012, they were among the best in the league, and were buoyed by playing in the feeble Northwest Division. It is something more than bad luck to be thrust into the hypercompetitive Pacific Division just as the team has faded to mediocrity.

In four games against Anaheim this year, the Canucks lost them all and managed a single point, an overtime loss. In sum they were outscored 24-6. More broadly, against the three California teams that dominate the Pacific, Anaheim, Los Angeles, and San Jose, the Canucks won just two of 14 games this year - 2-9-3.

How the Canucks alter this reality next year is unclear. Given that the Canucks do not seem set to compete for the top three in the division, next year will, at best, be about scrapping for seventh or eighth in the Western Conference, and opening the playoffs on the road. And that's the best-case scenario.

The fate of the coach is likely the immediate question. The Aquilini family was closely involved in Tortorella's hiring last June, even as the hockey executives, led by Gillis, made the final decision. And while the Aquilinis like Tortorella's hard-driving style, they have wondered about some decisions the coach has made, such as overplaying the team's stars. The strategy - which Tortorella has said was decided because of a lack of roster depth - unduly wore down the key players - and it showed in the results.

When the Canucks trail after one period - with two-thirds of the game to go - they are terrible, losing 23 of 27 games. And when it gets late, the Canucks' weak offence vanishes completely: the team has the fewest goals scored in the third period in the entire league this year, 58. Out of gas, when it counts.

Tortorella retreats to Point Roberts when each night's game is done. Point Roberts is a peculiar corner of the United States, located about a 45-minute drive south of Vancouver and inaccessible by land from anywhere else in the U.S. It is small, about a dozen square kilometres, and forested, rural. Point Roberts is home to about 1,200 people - and an estimated five per cent are in Witness Protection.

Tortorella's choice of home has had him dubbed by some as the Commuter Coach, though he is hardly the first Canuck to make it home. Former general manager Dave Nonis lived there, as did star skater Alex Mogilny. And the quarterback of the B.C. Lions, Travis Lulay, lives in Blaine, south of the nearby primary border crossing, Peace Arch.

Still, the choice was always odd, this distance, two bridges, one tunnel, and an international border, between the coach, and his hockey team.

'It's never about one guy,' said Ron Hughes last week. The 52-year-old hockey fan from Vancouver Island has lived in Point Roberts for years and spoke over coffee at the new business he owns, Caffe Capanna, near the water and, by chance, across from Mogilny's old place.

'The game is won with passion,' said Hughes. 'It'll be sad to see him go, if he goes.'

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